


beloved.

by WatanabeMaya



Series: <syntax> [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Chobits, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Androids, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Romance, Angst and Tragedy, Apologies, Breakfast, Car Accidents, Computer Programming, Day At The Beach, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Forgiveness, Grief/Mourning, Grocery Shopping, Healing, Inspired by Chobits, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Robot Feels, Robot/Human Relationships, Robots, Romance, Sad, Tragic Romance, basically yaku learns how (not) to let things go, pls enjoy my humble offering of pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25563094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatanabeMaya/pseuds/WatanabeMaya
Summary: “I don’t want to risk breaking you.”“I don’t break that easily, Yaku-san.”
Relationships: Haiba Lev/Yaku Morisuke, Kozume Kenma/Kuroo Tetsurou, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: <syntax> [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2010310
Comments: 20
Kudos: 70





	beloved.

**Author's Note:**

> at last it's finished! here is my yakulev angst anthem! big thanks once again to E for listening to my spazz about the idea months ago when it first came to me; to Hal for hyping with me about the Appeal of angsty grocery store confrontations once again and for showering me with love throughout this entire process; and to my bkak gc friends for supporting me despite the pain of this hehehe :) i hope you all enjoy it.
> 
> this is a clamp chobits au. basically, this world has androids known as persocom who function as personal computers and are usually identified by their distinct ear shapes if they're constructed in human-like form. more on the deets of that universe [ here ](https://clamp.fandom.com/wiki/Chobits)
> 
> disclaimer; i dont own hq

When Lev dies, it is a quiet affair.

Numerous people attend the wake. They chatter amongst themselves in hushed voices, somber tones – the sounds of it forcibly restrained in a manner so as not to appear obtrusive. Yaku sits in the back row of the room as far away from the crowd, eyes blank and figure motionless, with cuts on his face and an arm slung in a band. The cast pulls down heavily against his weight. 

_ So young,  _ a woman’s voice says.  _ What a pity. _

_ Gone too soon,  _ says another man.

Strangers come to him all clad in black, giving him their names which he can now hardly recall. Yaku views a series of faces pinched in a subtle show of sympathy.  _ I’m sorry for your loss,  _ they tell him, in multiple variations of the phrase strewn around his way like hollow platitudes recited in clockwork repetition.  _ My deepest condolences,  _ they’d say whenever they made their approach. _ I hope you find peace. I’m sorry.  _ Again.  _ He was loved. He was so very loved.  _ And again,  _ I’m so sorry.  _

Yaku’s learned, quickly, how to tune out their voices. 

(He doesn’t know when he’d just as easily begun to also tune out the pain.)

“Yaku-san,” another voice calls out to him. Yaku blinks himself out of his daze to look for the source of the sound. He lifts his gaze up from the floor and finds himself staring back at a familiar face.

Kenma.

“Yes?”

Somewhere in the background, Haiba Alisa steps onto the podium to deliver a eulogy on the passing of her brother. _I give you this poem,_ she announces, tone nasal and mouth pressed close into the sheer net of the microphone, _and_ _in its words, may you continue to live on._ Her usually lyrical voice is now uncharacteristically clipped and stiff. _For words are all that I can muster, my dear Lyovochka, and your memory is all that I have–_

Yaku coughs into his elbow softly and attempts to clear his throat. He turns his attention back to the blond man.

“Can I help you?” Yaku asks. 

Kenma tilts his head back and purses his lips. There’s something about it that puts Yaku off. Not quite a smile but it’s something almost close. It feels cryptic. A little bit serene. 

“No,” he tells Yaku softly. “No, you can’t.”

Kenma leans in closer and pushes a thin paper card into the heft of Yaku’s open palm. He reads out the familiar kanji of his underclassman’s name. His number. His email. His office address. His services. 

> **Kozume Kenma**
> 
> **_Persocom Engineer; AI Programmer_ **
> 
> _ 〒 314-0051 Tōkyō-to, Shinagawa City,  _
> 
> _ Togoshi, 5-chōme−11−7 _
> 
> _ 080-OOXX-1016 |  _ _ kodzu.ken@bbcorp.jp _

The blond leaves him behind to pay respects to Lev’s casket, accompanied by a taller male with rooster-like black hair and a pair of metal ears attached firmly on the sides of his head. Yaku doesn’t send them off with a goodbye or anything remotely close to a farewell of that sort; just simply stares on straight ahead, wordlessly, and watches their two figures walk together in the brief moment they pass him by.

⌘

It’s one in the morning when Yaku stumbles down the slope in the road and heads inside their apartment. He is greeted by silence, as expected. Yaku toes his shoes off at the foyer; flicks the light switch on.

“I’m home,” he announces, ever the creature of habit, as his fatigued body crashes face-first onto the king-sized mattress and lies on top of cotton-and-silk sheets. 

There is nobody there to answer.

⌘

(“Welcome back,” his own voice whispers to him in reply, the sound of it muffled against the push of the memory foam and the faint scent of another person’s pillow.)

⌘

Yaku makes the call not more than a week later, tongue thick and pressed hard against his palate as he dials in the numbers and waits for the other boy to answer. Kenma picks up on the third ring. 

_ “Hi.” _

“It’s Yaku,” he introduces himself. 

_ “I know,”  _ comes Kenma’s distant reply. Then, the sounds of movement. Yaku hears the rustle of static as the other boy shifts positions from across the line. At some point, eventually, Kenma brings himself to ask,  _ “Have you decided?” _

“Yes,” Yaku says, and then hesitates. He pauses to shake his head. “Er, I mean, no. Sorry. I...uhm...I’ll think about it.”

Kenma hums, his voice a stark quiet almost as monotonous as the hollow buzz of static. 

_ “I understand,”  _ Kenma tells him gently. Yaku is reminded of how sometimes the kindest words can come from the most distant of strangers.  _ “Take all the time you need.” _

Yaku gives his thanks before he promptly hangs up.

⌘

Kenma messages him as soon as Yaku sends over his specs. He’d listed down his preferences and the features he desired in a briefly bulleted email, before tacking on a small thank you as a sign off before his name. 

> _ >> are you sure  _

Yaku doesn’t have the energy to voice out his thoughts coherently. His ideas are incoherent, his words unintelligible. He wishes he could tell him that he’d never wanted it to happen, but the fact remains that it did, and now there’s nothing else that he can do but to deal with the consequences. 

Instead, Yaku types out a single word back in reply, succinct and straight to the point as always. 

> << _ positive _

Kenma answers him back with a warning.

> _ >> it wont be the same  _

Yaku sucks in a breath and stares at his empty hands. It’s a moment of weakness, he knows, but he has never been one to be called strong. 

> _ << i know  _

Of course he does.

⌘

They meet again after a harsh winter.

Kenma’s office area, Yaku quickly finds, is no different from Yaku’s own home in the outskirts of Roppongi. It’s a secondhand rental with shoji doors set up and the floorplan laid out in the traditional design, but the style of it clashes palpably against the jarring displays of machinery – rubber-coated wires scatter around  _ tatami  _ matted floors and lead back to copper-laced motherboards like future meeting past in a coalescence of technology. 

“Good afternoon, Yaku-sama.”

A persocom greets him at the door, with galaxy hair and eyes the color of amber. A familiar face. Yaku remembers encountering him in meetings twice before – first at the wake, and then second, at the burial. His ears, like Reuleaux triangles, stick out peculiarly from the sides of his head. 

“Kenma-sama is attending to another client in his studio at the moment,” the android smiles politely as Yaku unwraps his scarf. Two more persocoms appear and offer to take Yaku’s shrugged off coat to hang over the rack. “Please follow me, I will take you to the tearoom.” 

“Kuro.”

The persocom turns around. Yaku spots Kenma stepping out from a door at the far end of the hallway; his hair is tied up loosely in a low-knotted man bun. 

“I’m done,” Kenma informs them as he holds up a mobile persocom in the palm of his hand. Yaku eyes a pair of metal ears peeking out of a mop of bright orange hair. “Koutarou? Keiji? Help me return Shouyo to Kageyama-san.”

“Uwaah! Thanks for updating me, Kenma!” the petite android beams at his creator, grateful, practically buzzing with energy. He bounces up in the air to leap into the raven-haired persocom’s carefully cupped hands. Kenma nods and sends him off with a wave; Shouyo returns the gesture. Yaku watches them go.

“He’s ready,” Kenma says then, turning his head to face him. “Come in.”

⌘

Yaku wakes up to the sound of a sizzling pan coupled with the sight of silver hair and a pair of green eyes. 

“Yaku-san!” the persocom greets cheerfully, metal ears perking up at the faintest sounds of his arrival. “You’re awake. Good morning!”

“Morning.”

“I’ve already set up the table,” the android’s voice carries over from the stove, the smell of the meal wafting from the kitchen delicious enough to make Yaku’s mouth water. “Please make yourself comfortable. Breakfast will be up in a minute.”

“What’ll it be today?” Yaku asks, speaking around a yawn. He settles down on his chair to wait at the dining table. 

“Sunny side ups!” comes the bright reply as the other unties his apron and tosses a hefty serving of fried eggs onto Yaku’s plate. The persocom takes the seat across from him and rests his elbows onto the table, smiling back at him absently as he waits for him to eat. Yaku notes the pale alabaster of his skin and ceramic jade eyes; the way his limbs settle themselves carefully to accommodate their weight. “Dig in, Yaku-san,” he beams.

Yaku claps his hands twice in prayer, muttering an almost inaudible  _ Itadakimasu  _ before partaking in his meal. There’s a cup of rice that accompanies the viand, their soft whites and runny yolks enough to tell Yaku they’d been cooked over easy almost to perfection.

(It’s a major improvement from the past, he thinks, remembering the crunchy texture of their breakfasts in comparison, back when Lev used to always burn the eggs.)

“Haiba,” he says, because calling him ‘Lev’ now would just be wrong. “What’s this?”

“A tissue,” the persocom replies.

“Why are you giving me a tissue?”

“Because it looks like you needed it?”

Haiba glances at him warily, almost sheepish. He pushes the offering closer to Yaku’s face with an outstretched hand. Yaku focuses his gaze on attempting to read the other’s expression, pointedly ignoring the way his eyes sting from the pressure like water that failed to dry up well. 

He takes the damn tissue.

The persocom gestures to his plate. “How are they?” Haiba asks. 

“Good.” 

Yaku chews on his food carefully before he swallows. Perhaps he didn’t chew it carefully enough, he realizes, as the food scrapes against what is probably his esophagus and forms a painful lump at the back of his throat. He pours himself some water and takes a small sip. 

“Delicious, actually,” Yaku tells him thickly, voice hoarse. “You cooked them very well.”

“I’m glad, Yaku-san.”

He finishes the rest of his meal in three mouthfuls and a quarter-hour of silence. Then, Yaku wipes his face with the tissue and removes a rice grain that had been stuck stubbornly at the corner of his mouth. Haiba takes the plates to wash them at the sink before excusing himself briefly to recharge at the balcony. 

In the end, Yaku blinks back the dampness in his eyes and wonders vaguely when it was that the water from his glass must’ve dripped onto the table cloth. 

⌘

They shop for groceries together on a Tuesday, when Yaku has finished filming a CM for TVTokyo and signs on to another sponsorship with the rest of the Cheegles for Mizuno. Just because he’d asked to be on leave from the court scene doesn’t mean Yaku gets an excuse to shy away from the eyes of the press. It’s enough, at least, to help him put food on the table.

(Nevermind that Lev has left him enough savings in at least four of their shared bank accounts to afford keeping their Roppongi home and Yaku retiring early without a worry for the rest of his life. The little that Yaku can do, he tells himself, he still does.)

Heels lift off the ground as Yaku stands on his toes, an arm stretched upwards and reaching for a packet of raw sesame. Somewhere from behind him, he picks up the sound of a recognizable shuffle of footsteps. 

Yaku braces himself for a pair of hands to grab him from behind; waits for the familiar feeling of being picked up effortlessly off the ground. He shuts his eyes in silence.

Nothing.

Yaku blinks them back open to the sight of a porcelain hand in front of him. Haiba hovers over his figure, holding up the black sesame packet he’d been trying to grab from the topmost shelf.

“You looked like you were struggling a bit there,” the persocom tells him. 

“Did you just call me short?” Yaku asks, picking a fight.

“No,” Haiba answers with a faint shake of his head. “That’s kind of insensitive to say, Yaku-san.” 

The persocom shifts his attention to the object in his hand. Haiba focuses on deciphering the labels on the plastic food packaging; eyes scanning dully as he takes a moment to process the information.

“Sesame seeds?” Haiba reads aloud, before blinking back his processors and directing his gaze towards Yaku. His face washes over with a puzzled expression. “Yaku-san, you hate sesame seeds.”

“Yeah, but don’t you li–” 

He stops. 

The words catch in his throat. Yaku ignores the way that they burn as he forces himself to swallow them down. 

“They’re not so bad,” Yaku tells him evenly, the lie tasting like ashes at the tip of his tongue. His mouth feels dry when he pushes himself to continue. “I grew to get used to them.” 

“So if I sprinkle those over the rice during dinner tonight,” Haiba challenges, “can you promise me you won’t make a fuss trying to pick them out of the grains to remove them?”

Yaku’s nose wrinkles in disgust at the thought of such a proposal. His persocom laughs brightly at the cost of his expense.

“Thought so,” Haiba grins, whistling a tune as he returns the sachet he’d deposited into their basket just a moment prior. His movements are fluid, almost natural, but still. Yaku wonders what it means for persocoms like him; imagines how happiness must feel like when it courses through copper-leaded veins.

“Hey,” Yaku says, reaching out to grab the packet of seeds from out of the other’s grasp. 

“Hm?”

“Just a little.”

The persocom tilts his head. “A little?”

“I won’t pick them out if you only sprinkle a little,” he promises, ducking down to stare at a small chip in a tile on the linoleum floor. Yaku rolls his weight onto the balls of his feet like an idle, tender mercy; the smallest relief. He doesn’t have to look up to see the knowing smile that makes its way slowly on the android’s fair face.

“Alright, Yaku-san,” Haiba agrees softly. He places the sachet back into their basket. “Just a little, then.”

⌘

“You’re shaking.”

Yaku jolts out of his stupor at the sound of his persocom’s voice. They’re standing together outside on a crowded sidewalk in Shibuya, waiting for the stoplight to turn from red to yellow to green – a kaleidoscope of colors shifting to alert them of their turn to traverse the pedestrian crossing. There’s a new billboard posted up on one of the buildings, replacing an ad of Lev for perfume that once reminded him of the smell of the ocean breeze.

“I’m fine,” Yaku protests.

“You’re not.” Haiba frowns.

The android shrugs off his scarf and wraps the fabric around his neck. Yaku flinches as alabaster fingertips brush icily against his cheek. He hadn’t realized how much colder he had been without it. 

“Thanks,” Yaku mumbles, inhaling deeply as his breath puffs out into the air like a fog. He buries his nose deep into the wool. It doesn’t smell like Lev anymore, he notes to himself idly. 

The light flashes to a green. 

Briskly, the two of them start walking. The February wind hits his face as he does, the biting cold filling up the hollow space in the cavity of his lungs. Yaku ducks his head low in an attempt to generate warmth. 

He hardly smells anything at all. 

⌘

Most times, Yaku finds himself caught up in the blurred interstice between memory and reality; when he wakes up in the mornings to the sight of Haiba standing under the sun in the cramped space of their balcony, gaze turned away to take in the Roppongi skyline. At this angle, he can hardly see the metalwork that takes up the space of his ears; the circuitry that runs beneath his alabaster limbs and porcelain jade eyes. 

He almost forgets that the boy before him was something much less than a boy, that the persocom was no more than a combination of things engineered – an amalgamation of silver gears and copper wires and string codes all fitting together like spare parts that make up a whole.

It’s unfair, somehow, that Yaku thinks of himself in almost the same way. 

He wonders how it is that Lev is dead but he is the one left to keep on living; ponders on the idea that when Lev passed on, he’d carried a part of Yaku to die alongside him too. Nothing comes to him as easily anymore. He’s not quite a soul without a body as he is like a corpse with a heartbeat, but Yaku goes through the motions of living like clockwork, soulless and robotic, in the way he takes things as they come day by day. 

⌘

“You never touch me anymore,” Haiba tells him in the middle of the night, a cord dangling from his ear as he plugs himself into the nearest power socket by the door. Across the room, Yaku settles himself into the large space of the wooden king-sized bed. “How come?”

“Am I supposed to?” Yaku blinks.

“Not particularly,” the persocom replies. 

“Do you want me to?”

“Not particularly.”

Yaku frowns, confused. “Then why do you ask?”

“Kenma-sama said you used to,” Haiba tells him. He uses  _ -sama _ instead of  _ -san _ . “A lot. I remember, somehow.” He has memories, even, of times that Yaku has kicked Lev back when they were in high school – each of them being equal parts true as they are false. The images he conjures in the database of his mind’s eye are all less or more real, less or more fabricated. 

“Did I?” Yaku asks, then pauses to shut his eyes. “My head hurts.”

“Yaku-san.”

“Yes?”

“Why don't you touch me anymore?” 

Yaku raises his forearm and presses it over his forehead to cover his eyes. The weight is a welcome pressure against the dull ache inside his skull. He’s too tired to attempt to formulate another argument. 

“You’re expensive,” Yaku explains, proud of the way that his voice holds on steadily; his tone even as he delivers the rest of his reply. “Haiba.” His fingers trace small circles in the air vaguely. “You know.”

“Know what?”

“I don’t want to risk breaking you.”

“I don’t break that easily, Yaku-san.”

He sighs. “You don’t know that for sure.” 

Yaku flings away the arm that covered up his sight. He tucks himself in and pulls the blanket up to his chest. There is silence for a minute. Yaku listens to the sound of his breaths and counts slowly in between the ambient stillness. The hum of the generator pulls him out of reverie.

“Yaku-san?”

“The repairs,” Yaku admits to him, a feeble excuse. “I–” He breathes out slowly through his nose. “We can’t afford that.” 

“I was built for you, though,” Haiba smiles, his slender face half-hidden underneath the low light. “Did you really think they would make me with that consideration into something so fragile?”

“Maybe. My head hurts.”

“Is it a migraine?”

“Maybe.”

Yaku opens his eyes again and keeps them fixed at a random spot in the ceiling; watches the shadows morph and trickle and blend together amidst the darkness. He thinks about circuits and connections, about the way some things always lead back to one another. 

“Should I get you medicine?” the android offers.

Yaku raises a hand up in warning. “No need.”

“We have painkillers in the drawer next to the fridge.”

“I just want to sleep.”

“You’ve had a long day,” Haiba agrees, nodding. “Are you tired?”

“I’m going to sleep.”

“Good idea.”

Haiba unplugs himself and gets ready to power down. Yaku closes his eyes and listens to the faint whirring of the persocom’s motors, the languid drone of his engines. The steady hum of the exhaustion fan sings to him like a mechanical lullaby. Yaku lets the thought stew in his brain before the fatigue finally catches up to him, dreams of golden days when he had simply willed all his worries aside. 

He’s gone by the time Haiba whispers him a good night. 

⌘

The apartment is large but not spacious. It makes it difficult to clean on most days. Memories litter around the unit and stay tucked away on shelves, gathering dust with each passing cycle of moonlight – a perfume bottle of  _ Leroy Jealous Men’s Fragrance;  _ a teal-colored fountain pen with Russian lettering engraved on the sides. Two sets of toothbrushes. Yaku’s leather bound journal. Photographs of a boy who had smiled kindly at him one distant autumn day. 

Yaku can see him in everything.

He breaks down once when he’s cleaning out the closet, on an afternoon he’d spent swapping out his spring wear to display his lighter clothes for summer. Lev’s shirts are folded up neatly in small piles next to his, freshly laundered after Haiba had used them outside during the past week. Cashmere sweaters. A classic tweed. There are suit blazers hung up on the racks, firmly pressed and three sizes too large for Yaku to own. An expensive coat he once borrowed during a press con. 

In the corner, hidden behind a bundle of old socks, is a faded red jersey, untouched since the day its owner had worn it last. The sleeves are threadbare and fraying at the cuffs, with sunspots on the rubber printed  _ 11  _ that tells Yaku it has seen better days. He’d almost forgotten that this had still existed. Or that they had kept it all this time. 

Yaku stares at the piece of clothing and feels pinpricks well up in his eyes. It’s been months since the incident happened. He is stronger now. More fragile. 

Yaku picks up the jersey and presses the fabric against his skin, bundles up the cloth in careful fists with his hands. He hardly remembers how he feels anymore, nor the weight of him. The smell. 

“Yaku-san?” Haiba calls out as he walks into the room, and even if his voice has been configured to the same pitch as Lev’s and lilts intimately in the exact same way, it still isn’t the same. The persocom inches closer with the tread of small footsteps, bare feet shuffling as it glides across the wooden boards. “What’s wrong?”

“I...I don’t remember,” Yaku answers and crumples down to the floor on his knees. He breathes out slowly; a tender, trembling hiccup. “He—The things about him. Lev. How he felt. How he kissed. How he...how we–I don’t. I don’t remember anymore.”

Haiba crouches down to meet Yaku’s gaze. “I do,” the android says to him quietly, “Would you like me to show you?”

Yaku stands abruptly and rubs at his bloodshot eyes, the  _ Nekoma  _ jersey dropping forgotten to the floor without a sound. He sniffs.

“No,” he says, the word tumbling out of him in a rush. Yaku turns his head away to stomp towards the kitchen. “I need a drink.”

Haiba chases after him until the hallway, before he leans against the doorframe and lets his gaze follow suit for the rest of the way. “It’s too early for alcohol at this hour, Yaku-san,” his persocom chides, scolding.

“I’m going to make tea.”

Yaku turns the tap on and washes his hands; pumps out the soap and scrubs his skin raw. Then, he plucks out a kettle and fills it up with water; from the cabinet, he tears open a sachet of lemon balm. 

“This isn’t the kind I used to make for you.” Haiba says as he approaches him, picking up the box of tea sachets and twirling it around to inspect the serif label. 

“The pantry was full of them.” Yaku gestures to the cupboard stocked full of decaffeinated tea. He rests the kettle on top of the stove. “I checked the expiration dates before. They’ll spoil otherwise.”

“There  _ is _ a lot of chamomile in there,” Haiba observes, green eyes scanning the shelves as he makes a mental note to lessen the haul on their next trip for groceries. 

Yaku shrugs. “I don’t like chamomile,” he says.

“I know,” Haiba’s voice lilts quietly as he turns to him in response. “Neither do I. That’s why Alisa used to always brew me the Valerian kind. But for you, Yaku-san...” the persocom trails off before he would pause, expression softening as his lips curl up into a thoughtful smile. “Back then, I would always make you lavender.”

“I don’t like lavender either,” Yaku confesses. He directs his gaze away, eyes transfixed on a formless brown stain that seemed to mar the surface of their marble top counter. “I never did.”

“You told me it was your favorite.” Haiba pouts at him, confused. “You made Lev brew it for you all the time.”

“I lied,” Yaku tells him.

“Oh.”

“It used to make him happy,” Yaku begins shakily, words tumbling out of him and burning heavily with emotion. “When he made it the first time, I told him it helped. Lev smiled, then,” he says. “He was–It was so bright. His smile.”

Haiba stares back at him silently, eyes warm with unspoken understanding.

“I’m sorry,” Yaku mutters quietly underneath the subtle hitch of his breath. “I’m so sorry.”

The persocom cocks his head to the side, a simple question mirrored clear in his eyes. “Why are you apologizing?”

“ _ Because _ ,” Yaku says, heart heavy with a fresh surge of guilt as though the incident had only just happened. He can hardly imagine how people forgive themselves for all the things they didn’t say until it was too late. “I’m sorry for lying to you.”

“Yaku-san,” his persocom calls out to him in a moment of sheer honesty. “I don’t think–” Haiba shakes his head. “You’ve never lied to me.”

The moment breaks at the whistle of the kettle. In the silence, Yaku busies himself by setting down a green mug and pours himself his tea.

⌘

They take the train together on the day of Lev’s anniversary. He’d initially meant for the trip to be a visit to the grave to pay their respects but Yaku had chickened out at the last minute and gotten off at the wrong stop. They depart from the station to wander around aimlessly, strolling down dirt roads and winding paths, past rows of tea toned townhouses that looked almost identical in the way they were built side by side. Yaku kicks up a rock and lets it tumble through the grass. Haiba follows after him, walking closely behind. 

In the end, they wind up at a beach. 

They’re alone; the grounds are empty. It’s still too cold out to swim. The salt hung around loosely in the air, the smell of it bold and sharp and almost assaulting to his senses. Yaku rubs at his nose and pulls Haiba along with him to wade in the waters. They linger by the shoreline, watching the waves lap against the sand, the color of the sky as autumn deepens into dusk.

“Haiba,” Yaku whispers to the horizon, gaze distant as though searching for something from very far away. “I never told you how he died, did I?” 

“No,” Haiba answers softly, even though he already knows. The two of them act ignorant of the fact that Kenma had spared no detail in installing his information on everything, lest Haiba act as recklessly and end up breaking himself like Lev. “You haven’t. What happened, then?" the persocom asks, if only to humor him.

Haiba listens to Yaku divulge an old memory like a riptide, indulging him as he muses and allowing him an opportunity to grieve. They had a fight, he says. Yaku walked out in the heat of the moment. Lev went after him. It was raining, then. Roads are slippery whenever the pavement is wet. The stoplight turned to red. There was a truck. They both know how the rest of the story goes. 

“He pushed me,” Yaku says. “He’d never been that forceful with me before, you know? That was my role in our relationship. I was the one who used to kick Lev’s ass. It was never the other way around.”

Yaku forces out a small, trembling laugh. Haiba stares back at him without a word, expression wrought with pity as he witnesses his owner’s flat attempt. 

“He pushed me away so hard that I rolled off the ground and jammed my arm against the sidewalk railing,” Yaku continues. “The injury had me laid off for the rest of the season. But you know what? I can’t even bring myself to be mad at him. That selfless idiot. Lev risked his life to save me even when we were fighting – over what? The curtains? Breakfast? Probably something petty. I don’t even remember what the stupid fight was all about.” Yaku winces half-heartedly and blinks back up, eyes damp with untold pain. ”I never got to tell him that I was sorry.”

Yaku hates himself for it. It’s his biggest regret. If only he didn't make a fuss about things, then maybe Yaku wouldn’t have lost him. If only he hadn’t walked out back then, then Lev wouldn’t have given chase. If only he wasn’t so immature and irrational and  _ careless _ about everything, then, perhaps, Lev might still be alive right now, standing in front of him, vibrant and breathing.

“I wish it had been me,” Yaku admits at last.

He listens to the sounds of the ocean roar. Yaku rolls up his pants, feels the tide ebb and flow against his feet, his legs; feels himself pulled in and pulled back the same way as the waters – neither near nor far, and yet, as always, unceasing in its return.

“I wish it had been me instead."

“I don’t.”

A seagull flies over their heads, sounds of flight carried by the winds blowing over the softly rolling dunes. The current swirls deeper. Yaku feels his toes dig deeper into the sand.

“I don’t wish it were you,” Haiba clarifies, green eyes crinkling instinctively that Yaku can almost pretend the persocom hadn’t been programmed to form the familiar habit. “I know he feels the same. You shouldn’t say things like that, Yaku-san. He wouldn’t want you to be like this either.”

Yaku bows his head, defeated. “It’s unfortunate for you right now, isn’t it? To be constructed as a replacement for him for someone like me.” 

“I don’t mind,” Haiba replies, “Is it bad for me to still say that I wish that it weren’t?”

“No,” Yaku says and he pauses. The smell of the saltwater burns Yaku’s eyes. The tides pull away; he watches the waves kiss their farewell to the shore. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to, Yaku-san.” 

“I know. I just–” His voice cracks, tears dripping from the corners of hot eyelids. “I want to see him.” 

For a minute, there is silence; a muted ripple in the water. A voice echoes to traverse the distance:

“Yaku-san.”

(He remembers.)

Haiba takes his hand in the same way Lev had always done so before. It feels just as painful. 

Almost, just as kind.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading. i hope you enjoyed and found comfort in my story about letting go and holding on. have a great day and stay safe always. :)
> 
> check out [ this lovely piece of fanart ](https://twitter.com/Arca_Vyn/status/1293466328246845441) made by the amazing arcyy (tysm im honored once again that my work was able to inspire u!)
> 
> hype with me about hq on [twitter](https://twitter.com/onigiri_maya)


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